SMSC

Carswell is a Beacon Peaceful School (February 2015)
Beacon Peaceful School status is awarded by www.spiritualengland.org.uk, who believe that Peace can and should be taught. This status is an acknowledgement of the work we do at Carswell to promote Peace between children, adults, the community and the wider world.

Here is a summary of our application to become a Beacon Peaceful School.

SMSC is embedded throughout daily life at Carswell. Our mission statement, ‘Happy together, learning for life,’ underpins all that we do and say.

We model positive relationships between adults to children and adult to adult, child to adult and child to child in all of our day-to-day interactions. Through our values of Responsibility, Respect, Resilience, Reflectiveness and Resourcefulness, we teach children how to be successful human beings not only academically but as social, moral, spiritual and cultural people. Through our ‘Good Learner’ posters and work with The Learning Organisation (www.tlo.org.uk) , we ensure that learning to learn skills are embedded throughout all of our lessons. These values are shared with Larkmead Secondary School where most of our children transfer to. Our aim is to help prepare children for the next phase of their education through this close partnership.

We also teach SMSC explicitly in PSHE (Circle Time), using guidance from Family Links (www.familylinks.org.uk) as well as making the necessary links to ensure it is embedded in our curriculum projects.

Elements of SMSC are also taught in R.E.

A programme of values-led assemblies draws our whole school together weekly and separately as classes, to explore the values and beliefs we have chosen to define our school.

Children at Carswell regularly take part in charity events to raise awareness and help them to understand that they can make a difference in the world.

Every year, the children seek sponsorship to learn a ‘Big Dance.’ So far we have raised over £3000 for Helen and Douglas House and The Amber Phillpott trust. This year we will be learning all UNICEF and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Here is a video of our Big Dance in 2014 working with www.ajactive.co.uk who helped us with the choreography and performance.